The Bookstore (32 page)

I fish my phone out of my bag, and try to call my mother. There is no signal.

I finally reach the Winslow House. It is not locked, of course, because nobody is worried about thieves. I peep into the sitting room—the French windows that face the sea are closed but there must be gaps in the frames, because the gauzy curtains move gently. The piano keys are glimmering softly in the twilight. There are Hopper pictures that have this juxtaposition of house and ocean, an open door with open sea beyond. When I saw them in England, I thought they were Magritte-like fantasies, but now I think he probably drew from life. How privileged they are, the van Leuvens and all the rest of them, that this is here whenever
they want it. How privileged I should feel, to be here at all. But I do not fit.

I move into the center of the room, catch a wisp of a reflection of myself in the mirror that startles me. I turn to look fully. In the pale dress that I chose for the party, with my hair pinned up and some of it now falling down from the running, I could be the ghost of a sad girl who lived here a century ago or more. Sadness permeates the room—I don’t know if it is mine or if it belongs to some forlorn spirit. Anyway, we suit each other.

I go over to the grand piano, sit down, stroke the keys. I can play to about grade one, the first foothill rather than the last pinnacle. I’ve never played on a grand. I start to play a very simple version of the
Moonlight Sonata
that I learned when I was a child.

I don’t turn on the light. It’s the
Moonlight Sonata,
after all, and it goes with the mood of the room. I get it wrong at first; it’s a long time since I played. But I get the hang of it, and my absolute solitude is conducive to playing it well.

Music is like poetry. It can stop you thinking. But it can also open you up. I put my loneliness and my sadness and my happiness into the music; I play my simplified
Moonlight Sonata
for children as if I am Alfred Brendel. I play like a musical genius, except for all the wrong notes.

When I finish, I sit quietly for a moment. I wish that Luke could have heard
that,
so at least he would know I have some sort of soul.

There is a noise, and I jump. Cornelius van Leuven is standing in the doorway like a revenant. He has his hands in his pockets.

“You play exceptionally badly,” he says.

“I know.”

“Can you play the rest? Can you play the third movement?”

I look at him with my eyebrows up. We both know that I can’t.

“I can,” he says. He is leaning now against the doorway.

“From memory?” I say. I should say,
How could you say those appalling things to me, and haven’t you ever heard of knocking, and are
we really going to talk about Beethoven rather than the facts that face us?,
but I don’t.

“No. But Carter will have the music.” He pushes himself from the doorpost, rifles through a pile of sheet music on a table, and switches on the lamp near the piano. I get off the stool and he sits down on it, opens the music.

“Like you, I feel more like the first movement,” he says. “Do you know enough to turn for me?”

“Just about,” I say. He rests his fingers lightly on the keys while he studies the music for a few seconds, and then he starts to play.

He plays with the absolute assurance that I expected, but also with an emotion that I would never have imagined, not from the man who stroked the plasterwork in his study with such gentle menace. He plays what I played, without going wrong, and under his slower, more deliberate fingers, the sonata becomes a lamentation. Is it because I am not doing what he wanted me to do? A lamentation for his son? It seems deeper. It seems, because he is not a young man, to be sorrowing for all that should not have been, for all that might have been. It is sadness outpoured.

He sits in silence at the end, as I did, without moving. I walk over to the window, and then about the room, as if I will find a place where I am comfortable. It was perhaps clever of him to play the piano with me. Maybe in
The Art of War
it is offered as a tip for disarming your opponent.

I think of the music Luke played for me in The Owl, the music from the old men in Alabama, the music they play on the music system at The Owl. There is so much sad music that my baby is listening to in the womb: Emmylou Harris and Dock Reed and Leonard Cohen and now Beethoven. I wonder if it is influential—I don’t want to set my baby’s temperamental thermostat to “low” by accident. I have to hurry out and buy some jolly stuff.

“In my study just now,” Cornelius says, looking straight ahead of him, “I put you through a test. It was important to me, to Olivia, to all of us, to know what sort of person you were.”

I do not say anything. When plans go awry, and then someone
protests that they were just testing you, it seems so clichéd as to be almost comical. Almost.

“We are from a very old family. I know Mitchell saw it as his duty to offer marriage to you, and I respect him for that. But before allowing such a thing—‘allowing’; Mitchell is an adult—before
acceding
to such a thing, we had to ascertain, beyond doubt, that you were not—that there were not ulterior motives involved.

“I know I was hard on you. It was hard to do it. But I am pleased to say, Esme, that you passed my test.”

I stand in the middle of the room, on a faded blue carpet that is probably an Aubusson or something. I trace the arabesque pattern with my toe before I look up.

“But, Mr. van Leuven,” I say, as softly as he spoke to me earlier, “I am afraid that you did not pass mine.”

His skin whitens, and he moves out to the hallway without a word. He opens the heavy front door, and then pauses. Over his shoulder, he says: “You might think to be a little anxious about where my son is, Miss Garland. There was a time when he seemed incapable of straying from the side of the woman he loved. The explanation
might
be that he has outgrown that.” He lifts his shoulders gently. “Good night,” he says.

I go upstairs. I take off my party clothes, and brush my teeth. My doleful intent is to lie down and go sadly to sleep. Perhaps I can contract consumption in the next few hours and waste away poignantly, as I listen to the sea outside the window and the clinking of the chains on the boats. I imagine the stricken faces of the guilty around my deathbed. “Can we at least save the child?” Cornelius will ask, shadows in his cheeks from his secret understanding of the part he has played. And the priest, or the doctor, the authority in a black coat, will say, “In such cases, the outcome is doubtful. We can but pray.”

This gives way to a more prosaic rehearsing of the interview with Cornelius and the rest. I decide that this passive-aggressive dream of death, and soaking my pillow with bitter tears, is all craven. I get dressed again, this time with a thick cardigan over the
top of my dress. I splash my face with cold water and stride back to the party. The striding helps. The party is now an energetic and drunken buzz of noise. I can’t see anyone I recognize. I go from one room to a second, but I falter at the third. I have come, sober, pregnant, wrapped in a cardigan, to find my fiancée, to tear him away from the party, and possibly from his love. I may as well be in slippers with my hair in rollers. Why did I even
pack
a cardigan?

There is no Mitchell, no Anastasia.

“Hi!”

A woman comes up to me; she is one who was speaking to Anastasia earlier. She looks glittery and brittle. She takes a long, practiced gulp of champagne.

“Esme, right? Such a pretty name. Where did you get it?”

“My name? I am named after my great-grandmother.”

“That’s so sweet.”

“Thanks.”

“Mitchell was looking for you a little while back. He’s gone down to the beach,” she says.

“Oh, right. Right. Thanks.” I suspect her motives. Why would he be down at the beach? It’s freezing.

I turn away, not to chase Mitchell anywhere, but to go back. The cardigan, the hurt; I can’t hide either of them.

When the path forks, I know I should take the left fork back to the house. I stand still for a minute. The moon is up, and I can see my way easily. I will just see if he is there.

I reach the fence and take a few steps on the soft white sand. Then I see them. There, at the water’s edge, is Mitchell, looking out to sea. And about two yards to his right, looking likewise out to sea, is Anastasia.

They are not in a passionate embrace. They are not touching, they are not speaking, they are hardly even moving.

I feel almost as if I am turned to stone myself. Their intimacy couldn’t be more clear if I were catching them in bed together. People get drunk at parties and they have sex with each other and that is that, but this is something else.

I make myself stay, make myself face the truth.

The night is very bright. There is moonlight on her hair.

He turns slightly to her and speaks. I can’t hear at all, they are too far away, but I can see very clearly, and their bodies and gestures are saying all there is to be said. Anastasia, when she has listened, turns her head away from him. Her neck is so elegant—all her movements are so elegant, like a dancer’s. He speaks again, explaining, requesting—whatever it is, he wants her to understand.

She is wrapped in something against the cold, some blanket or other, and her arms are folded—not in the adamant way that people normally fold their arms, but as if to protect herself, shield herself. He is talking to her, and she is nodding. She looks down at her feet, moves the sand with her shoe. Mitchell moves to her, and raises his hand as if to stroke her hair, but then takes it down again without touching her. He moves away. Her head leans fractionally to his, as though she is yearning towards him. They stand and stand. After long minutes, his hand goes to her arm, and he just holds her upper arm through the blanket. It is a movement full of restraint, as if he can’t permit himself more than this, the comfort you would offer a stranger.

He walks away, rapidly, to the left, towards the Winslow House.

Anastasia stays where she is for a minute, and so do I. I should go weeping away.

It isn’t very pleasant, being the object of duty rather than desire. Their love turns me instantly into a pitiable object. No matter what I am like, I am the pitiful third, outside the charmed world that is its own justification.

Anastasia is unknowingly walking straight towards me. I do not move. When she sees me, she pauses for a fraction of a second and then comes, stopping before me. There is silence for a while. I say, “You love him.”

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t. I don’t.”

Tears are in my eyes, but I hope I can stop them from being in my voice. “It is all right,” I say. “You don’t need to—”

“No!” she says. “It isn’t like that.” I realize she sounds truthful rather than alarmed.

“I just saw—”

“What you saw,” she says, wearily, “is Mitchell having his little drama. I knew he would have to find a way. He did; it’s done.” She pauses, and then says, “We didn’t get to talk earlier. But here’s what I think. I know he’s the father. But my advice is to run.”

I don’t say anything.

“You love him, I know,” she says.

I assent.

“Love someone else,” she says, and then, after looking at me for a long time, she says, “I know. Well then. Come on, it’s cold.”

She parts from me at the path, and I go back to the house.

I go upstairs, and get ready for bed, again, and slip between the sheets. I stare up at the ceiling. Is life when you are going to get married supposed to be like this? What will it be like afterwards, if it is this difficult now? Mitchell is lying in the other bed.

Into the darkness his voice comes.

“Esme, I have to tell you something. I took Anastasia to the beach tonight. I was very worried, because according to my parents, she was still—she still had some feelings for me. I want to be completely honest. I took her to the beach to tell her there could never be anything between us again. She was upset—very—but I think, eventually, she will be all right.”

I do not speak. He comes out of his bed with a bound, and crouches by me.

“I love you absolutely, Esme Garland. Body and soul. In the morning, I am going to wake you up, early, and give you hours of unimaginable pleasure. Now go to sleep.” He pads back over to his own bed and lies down. In seconds, I can hear the sound of snoring.

CHAPTER TWENTY